The Background

Rethink Ireland was set up in 2015 to support the most innovative non-profit organisations working in communities nationwide. Their five-year impact report became a publication to communicate their manifesto for the future while also demonstrating their success and their actual impact on the country.

Rethink Ireland provides cash grants and business support to social innovations that can make a real difference. Their task is to fuel these innovations with the knowledge and advice they'll need to succeed on a nationally impactful scale.

Their five-year impact report needed to document impact in both a quantitative and qualitative way. The audience included a mix of corporate investors, government bodies and innovators themselves. The design needed to demonstrate concrete results, showcase the innovators behind those results, and provoke a response and future action from the reader

The Idea

The brief was to create a vibrant impact report which stood out amongst a sea of corporate reports and captured the passion and success of the innovators they support. The idea was to pose a question on the cover and answer the question with the results inside.

A key focus of the report was documenting the impact of Rethink's support on past awardees – the stories which helped bring the awardees to life. Rather than traditional portrait photography, Illustration was chosen to accompany the awardee case studies, partly due to Covid-19 limitations but also to reflect Rethink Ireland's innovative ethos and ability to approach things differently. We worked closely with Irish illustrator Olivia Golden to create a suite of striking portraits of each awardee. Rendered in loose pen and ink with added texture and vibrant colour, the illustrations sat alongside a Q&A with each awardee and helped create a human connection to each story

The Execution

The design uses a mix of an elegant serif type, bold illustrated portraits and hand-rendered lettering to capture the balance between expertise and passion.

The front section of the report is shorter than the back section, which contains the awardee stories – allowing readers to navigate straight to the stories behind the impact or examine the detail and strategy first. This was helpful to Rethink when approaching donors or future innovators, as they could use the most relevant section of the report to connect to their audience.

Throughout the report, hand-rendered, illustrated elements punctuate and highlight statistics or keywords, reflecting the human hand behind every piece of information. The vibrant and bold colour palette reflects the impact and energy behind this 'manifesto'.